Mailchimp’s free tier is what made it a class apart in a sea of email automation tools that all charged a minimum of $20 per month to get you started.
Maillchimp has crossed millions of dollars in revenue. With the free account you can host up to 2000 subscribers for free. You can send around 12000 emails within this limit. If you just entered the world of email marketing, Mailchimp has a lot to offer.
With this free account, you can set up automated campaigns too. You can send a welcome series of emails. You can set up a bit of automation with the tool.
How to get started?
To start you need a Mailchimp account first. Create an account with Mailchimp.
When you login you will see your dashboard before you.
To get going with a campaign, click on the button that says create campaign.
You will get a popup with three options—create an email, create an ad, create a landing page. You could create all these with your free account. But we’re most interested in creating an autoresponder campaign. So click on create email.
In the options listed among the top menu—Regular, Automated, plain-text and a/b testing—click on automated.
Creating the welcome email automation
The welcome automation email is sent to subscribers immediately after they sign up. It includes content from a template that Mailchimp created. And you can edit it to personalize and customize the content.
Content is not the only aspect of the email you can change. You can alter the timing. Generally the welcome email is sent immediately after someone signs up or confirms their email. However with options and configuration settings you can choose to delay sending the email by a day, by 6 hours by 2 hours or more.
You can also choose not to send welcome emails.
To edit the content here’s what you can do. Enter a campaign name and choose an audience- say new names to your list. Send the welcome email to anyone who signs up and repeat the action indefinitely.
Once you have filled in the details, Mailchimp will ask you to review everything. Do that. Proofread and edit. There’s no room for error.
Click start sending and your automation flow is complete.
There are few other things you can edit as well.
Edit from: This option lets you edit the name and the email address that subscribers see when they get the email. There’s no need to keep it the same one that you used to create mailchim account on.
Edit subject lets you edit the subject line along with the brief preview text subscribers see when the email reaches their inbox.
After you have edited click save, proceed to the next section.
Ultimately you can preview the whole thing.
By clicking on edit design you can also edit the design of the email.
After you’re satisfied, click on save and continue and click on start sending.